Silver Hair and UFO's

Okay, now I remember why I never went to high school reunions before.

DH and I arrived at the reunion site, and I began to look around for my freshman college roommate—she had signed the guest list, so I knew she was there somewhere. Meanwhile, I scanned the room for familiar faces.

There were none.

Oh, wait--I did see one person, Richard, who resembled his younger self. My roomie said he could shed light on where another friend, Marion Turnipseed, was.

TS: Richard, I'm sure you don't remember me . . .
Richard: Sure I do—your hair was more silver last time I saw you.
TS: Richard, I'm a natural blonde.
Richard: Are you still selling real estate?
TS: I, uh--

Actually, I think the room was full of people, each of whom knew two or three other people, and all were trying to figure out who the rest were.

There were a couple of reasons for this. First, the event was a combined reunion for two neighboring high schools, each of which had a senior class of several hundred people. There were maybe eighty to a hundred people, total, at the reunion.

Second, as I started to calculate how many years had passed since I had seen any of these individuals, I realized why I didn't recognize any of them. And now I was also depressed.

And then there was the food, or UFO's, as I called them (Unidentifiable Food Objects). They made school cafeteria food seem like fine dining. As best we could figure, the menu consisted of:

 Breaded Minced Fried Shrimp Parts (I denied finding any shrimp)
 Creamy Meatballs Sans Meat
 Pigs in a Blanket without the Blanket

DH and I took turns trying to guess what the food objects were.

TS: What is this little curly thing?
DH: I think it's mostly breading.
TS: What's inside this little round object?
DH: I'm not sure—is it meat?
TS: Is it a vegetable?
DH: Is it—
TS: A mushroom?
DH That's it! Let's go out for sushi.

The Big Money we paid must have gone to the band. Yikes.

Visiting with my old roommate was fun. It turns out that she lives in a town that I happen to visit a couple of times a month, so we exchanged contact info and planned to get together. And I did discover the whereabouts of my other friend, Marion Turnipseed.

Mostly, though, I remembered how great it was to escape high school.

Party Now Part Deux

My old high school classmates have set up a web site for our class reunion—actually, it's a double reunion for graduates of two neighboring high schools. The site includes a list of people who plan to attend. I looked for the names of any of the three people I actually knew out of the several hundred in our graduating class, but alas, they were not to be found.

"Any old boyfriends?" DH inquired. "I didn't date anyone who went to my high school." I added, "Wonder what that means?" Probably there's another neurosis lurking in my psyche that is yet to be uncovered. Oh, well.

What I did find was a ticket price of $50 per person. "Ridiculous!" I said to my husband. "I don't drink, I STILL don't dance, and I'm paying $50 per person?" One wonders if the other members of my graduating class are as selectively cheap as I am.

We'll discuss "selectively cheap" on another day.

DH was noncommittal. "It's up to you," he said. The odds of our attending were slim at this point, but I decided that if the name of any one of my three old friends appeared on the list of attendees, I'd reconsider.

Well, today I revisited the web site and found the name of the girl who became my first college roommate! Ha! Well, it'll be worth the $100 just to see her—she was a smart girl with a rapier-sharp wit. And there will be some folks there who know DH, as well.

The check is in the mail.